Straight up, I’ll say that the heading is supposed to be “alarmist.” But the fact remains that, unless we do something now, the future is far too unpredictable to depend upon.
A report published in Nature by authors Roger Pielke Jr., Tom Wigley and Christopher Green, has described the IPCC’s assumptions that the bulk of the challenge of reducing future emissions will occur in the absence of climate policies as “…optimistic at best and unachievable at worst…”
The authors believe that, led by India and China, the world is only going to see a rise in energy use. As countries like India and China begin to develop further, seeing rural populations move in to high-rises where the energy costs grow exponentially, emissions will rise.
These changes will force a transformation of global energy systems, but such a change will take decades. And that is even if they were started today.
The question remains, and the authors conclude, that it is a “risky game” to hope that those changes will happen in the future. The IPCC should focus on how to bring about those changes now, rather than put the burden on the shoulders of a future generation.
Check out the full report here at Nature.
